Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Happy Halloween

By Leah F.

Happy Halloween! The scary time is almost here, and I know some people
are excited. But here is a question; do you celebrate Halloween? I do,
but in my family we aren’t allowed to be anything scary or dark.
Halloween is a big deal going on in the Christian community, because
people don’t know whether it is right to celebrate it or not as
Christians. What do you think? Here I have put together the history of
Halloween, some Bible verses, and some personal views on the subject of
Halloween.

Halloween comes from a Celtic holiday known as Samhain (pronounced
“sah-win”) which means “summer’s end.” Samhain is the celebration of the
end of harvest season. In this time, the pagans believed that OCtober
31 was when the living and dead worlds overlapped, and the dead would be
able to come back to the living, and they would make people sick and
ruin some of the crops. The pagans would then have bonfires and wear
masks and costumes in order to please the spirits, so they wouldn’t hurt
them.

There is controversy about what Samhain was really about though. Some
people think it was devoted to worshipping the dead, or their god of
death Saman. While others believe that Samhain was a time to just
prepare for the winter and gather supplies while thanking the people who
had already passed.

But where do we get our Halloween? Some folklorists believe and have
evidence that Halloween customs were brought over by Irish Immigrants.
Then, children picked up, and Halloween was then a colonial wide
children’s holiday. By the late 1800’s the mischief of tricking caught
on. People would unhinge farmer’s gates, egg people’s houses, etc. But
by the early 1900’s, the tricks got a bit more serious, and that is the
type you might see on the news. Then, to try and stop the “tricking” the
town would bribe the children with candy, saying that if they stopped
tricking they could get a treat. So then the children got to dress up,
and go from house to house getting their candy and going “trick or
treat!”

Now here’s the question; should Christians celebrate this “holiday?”
Now, unlike some people think, the pagans were not worshiping Satan, but
just their ancestors. But for some people, and I think for most
Christians, that is still not a good reason. Witches and all that “black
magic” stuff actually stopped once the Catholic Church started
persecuting them, but they are still in the Halloween culture. Now
Ephesians 5:11 says “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of
darkness, but rather reprove them.” So, then some people would take
that as “don’t go along with pagan rituals.” But another question is; if
you are nothing scary, and only are getting candy, is it really that
bad? Now of course, I can’t go right up and say “Halloween is okay!” or
“Halloween is bad!” because that wouldn’t really be true either way. My
personal belief is that even if Christians do celebrate Halloween, it
won’t determine whether they go to heaven or not, so you can choose.